Christopher Lockwood reviews Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost by Jonathan Fenby (via Arts & Letters Daily):

As one contemplates China at the opening of the 21st century, it is Chiang's vision, not Mao's, that has triumphed. There is nothing recognisably communist about China any more: few countries in the world, and certainly no developing country, are so nakedly capitalistic. Inequalities are deepening unchecked. The economy is growing at 8 per cent or more a year, the consequence of rapid integration with the outside world of which Mao was so suspicious.

...the decade of the "Nanking Republic", Fenby finds, was the nearest thing to good government China saw in the 20th century. It is possible to believe that had world events not interfered so calamitously, much progress might have been made.